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Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Gerd Albrecht FERRUCCIO BUSONI Turandot - Arlecchino

TURANDOT - ARLECCHINO

Joanna Goodale BACH IN A CIRCLE

Born into a British-Turkish family, Joanna Goodale is a French-Swiss pianist with an eclectic and creative identity, opening up the classical repertoire to traditional world music and to her own comprovisations. 

She has been invited to perform in Switzerland, in France, in Germany, in Turkey, in Spain and in the United Kingdom. Graduate of a Master of Arts in Piano (Geneva) and a Master of Arts in Anthropology (London), she has benefitted from the support of the Fondation L’ABRI in Geneva and of the advice of internationally renowned pianists such as Alice Ader, Alain Kremksi, Cedric Pescia, Menahem Pressler and Anne Queffélec. Deeply convinced that music can transcend borders and touch the sublime, she invites her public to enter in communion with sound and silence in a space-time of rare intensity. 

BACH IN A CIRCLE proposes an encounter between the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and the Sufi whirling dervishes, weaved around a programme where the pieces are in a dialogue, questioning the mysteries of the human soul and reflecting the movements of the Universe. 

After visiting Turkey many times, I realised that Sufi music brought out in me similar emotions to those I feel when listening to Johann Sebastian Bach. This led me to do some research and then highlight the similarities between these two universes which, at first glance, can seem very different. Indeed, sacred Sufi songs and the works of Bach are both characterized by an expression of deep spirituality, a quest to represent the cosmic order and the use of repetitive cyclical patterns in perpetual movement, leading to a sense of transcendence and inner silence. (Joanna Goodale)

Federico Colli J.S. BACH Italian Concerto - Partita IV - Chaconne

Known for his highly imaginative and philosophical approaches to his musical presentations, Federico Colli is back with a second album on Chandos. Having begun with Scarlatti sonatas, he now turns his hand to the great master J.S. Bach to explore the relationship between Bach’s music for keyboard and what Colli regards as its transcendent quality, its universal beauty. 

In a personal note for the booklet, Colli explains how he arrived at the extraordinary interpretations captured here. The relationship he explores is discoverable in the Italian Concerto and Partita No. 4, but it is in Ferruccio Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne that the relationship, in his view, becomes clear. Colli offers the listener a vivid interpretation which links the progress of the piece, rich in symbolic detail, to important stages in the life, and afterlife, of Christ, different re-iterations of the theme and of the tonalities corresponding with key moments in the religious narrative. 

As always, Colli gives deeply felt and exciting performances, his irrepressible personality and flair evident throughout.

Raphaela Gromes / Julian Riem SERENATA ITALIANA

Italy produced a wealth of fine Romantic instrumental music between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, and some of the names on this disc used to be far more familiar than they are today. So don’t be put off by the packaging: this really isn’t the sort of potboiler you might expect. The young German cellist Raphaela Gromes deserves only applause for putting together such an imaginative debut recital.

The 16-year old Busoni’s skittish, lilting Serenata serves as an overture to the disc’s centrepiece, the Cello Sonata by Giuseppe Martucci. Already, two things are clear: the cello seems to have inspired this particular school of Italian composers to music that’s either melancholy or sparkling. And Gromes makes a very attractive sound, warm but clearly defined at the top, big and sonorous at the bottom. The piano is slightly recessed and the acoustic is generous, which inevitably means that the cello’s C string has a tendency to boom at the expense of Julian Riem’s stylish piano-playing; a minor quibble.

And Gromes clearly feels passionately about the Martucci, which she compares to Brahms, though I found that a little of Martucci’s soaring cello over turbulent piano-writing goes a long way. Matilde Capuis’s wartime Animato con passione contains nothing that would have startled Verdi, but Gromes combines sincere expression and needlepoint brilliance in Sinigaglia’s two miniatures and wraps it all up with an effortlessly nonchalant account of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s jaw-droppingly flashy paraphrase on Rossini’s ‘Largo al factotum’. Some cellists give a triumphant shout of ‘Figaro!’ at the end of this piece. Gromes, modestly, doesn’t: a shame, because she’s earned it. (Richard Bratby / Gramophone)

Domenico Nordio GIAN FRANCESCO MALIPIERO - FERRUCCIO BUSONI

The Venetian Domenico Nordio is considered one of the most prestigious Italian violinists of his generation. An eclectic musician, with a vast repertoire, he has performed in all the major theaters of the world and with the most famous orchestras. Nordio is known for his version of the Romantic and Twentieth century repertoire, in particular the Italian composers of which is considered the interpreter of reference. Over the last years, he has dedicated himself to the rediscovery of works by Respighi, Dallapiccola, Casella, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Malipiero, Ghedini and Petrassi.

Edna Stern / Amandine Beyer CHACONNE

The chaconne, like the passacaglia, is an old dance of Spanish origin, often slow and solemn, which is built on a rhythmic scheme in triple time. The term chaconne came to designate a variation form founded on a theme of four or eight bars stated in the bass, and ending with a clearly marked perfect cadence. Cadential regularity, a slow and solemn tempo, triple time, and the ostinato principle are the essential characteristics of this imposing form whose majestic gait and demonstrative, ostentatious character make it a Baroque phenomenon par excellence. This major genre inseparable from the Baroque style, was to prove ideal terrain for the creators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its unrivaled period of expansion, notable for distinguished contributions from such men as Frescobaldi, Couperin, and Buxtehude, culminated in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, with such noted examples as the towering Passacaglia in C minor for organ, BWV582. (Arkiv Music)

Marie-Ange Nguci EN MIROIR

At the age of 18, Franco-Albanian pianist Marie-Ange Nguci has already positioned herself as an outstanding young artist of her generation. Her technical prowess and exceptional musicality has allowed her to develop a unique and poetic tonal quality, dazzling audiences in performance.

Nguci’s talents were recognized early on when she was awarded First Prize at the Lagny-sur Marne International Piano Competition in 2011. After winning the 2015 Dorothy MacKenzie Competition at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York (IKIF), Nguci has been invited to give a solo recital at the French Consulate of New York in 2016. 

Performing frequently as a soloist, chamber musician and with orchestra, Nguci enjoys engaging with contemporary classical music and worked directly with composers Thierry Escaich, Graziane Finzi, Alain Abbott, and Fabien Touchard. Most recently, she recorded works by French composers César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gabriel Fauré, Olivier Messaien and Thierry Escaich, examining different historical periods and aesthetics.

Nguci received her Bachelor’s degree in Musicology at the Paris-Sorbonne University and her Master’s degree in Piano performance with highest honors at the Paris Conservatoire. She is currently enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire’s prestigious Artist Diploma course in piano while studying ondes Martenot and completing additional Master’s degrees in musical analysis and music pedagogy. She is a recipient of major grants from the Meyer and L’Or du Rhin Foundations and the French-American Piano Society in New York.

Yuuko Shiokawa / András Schiff BACH - BUSONI - BEETHOVEN

Yuuko Shiokawa and András Schiff are heard here in an insightful programme of sonatas for violin and piano which begins with Bach’s Sonata No.3 in E major, ends with Beethoven’s Sonata No.10 in G major, and has at its centre Busoni’s Sonata No. 2 in E minor. As on their earlier and widely-admired recording for ECM (featuring Schubert Fantasies), Shiokawa and Schiff play the music with absolute authority and deep understanding.

Most of Johann Sebastian Bach’s chamber music was written in the period 1717-1723, when he was employed as Kappellmeister at the court of Cöthen. Bach wrote six violin sonatas, with the E major sonata standing apart from its companions, as Misha Donat notes in the CD booklet. “Of the two Adagios, the first, with its elaborate violin cantilena, is like the slow movement of a concerto…In the hauntingly beautiful c-sharp minor second slow movement, the melody is shared equally between the two players, at first alternating and then proceeding in contrapuntal dialogue.” The second allegro, meanwhile, is a “dazzling display piece unfolding in a vertiginous stream of semiquavers.”

No other 20th century composer was as deeply steeped in the music of Bach as Ferruccio Busoni, and his second sonata, composed in 1898 and published in 1901, is indebted to both Bach and Beethoven. Its form makes a number of references to Beethoven’s late sonatas, and the final movement incorporates as its variation theme Bach’s chorale “Wie wohl ist mir”. The success of the work marked a turning point for Busoni, who had hitherto invested most of his energies into his life as performer. “Repeated performances of my violin sonata have greatly encouraged me,” he wrote in 1902. “From next autumn I seriously intend to work just as hard as a composer as I have up to now as a pianist.”

Ludwig van Beethoven’s G-major Sonata, written in 1812 for French violinist Pierre Rode, was the last of his violin sonatas, and perhaps the most beautiful and original of them. Misha Donat; “The sonata begins with one of Beethoven’s most magical inspirations: the quiet sound of a violin trill. The trill, and the theme it engenders, is followed by a series of arching arpeggios whose expansiveness seems to open up infinite vistas.” (ECM Records)

Lise de la Salle BACH UNLIMITED

In just a few years, through her international concert appearances and her award-winning Naïve recordings, 29 year-old Lise de la Salle has established a reputation as one of today’s most exciting young artists and as a musician of uncommon sensibility and maturity. Her playing inspired a Washington Post critic to write, “For much of the concert, the audience had to remember to breathe… the exhilaration didn’t let up for a second until her hands came off the keyboard.” 

A native of France, Ms. de la Salle first came to international attention in 2005, at the age of 16, with a Bach/Liszt recording that Gramophone Magazine selected as „Recording of the Month.“ Ms. de la Salle, who records for the Naïve label, was then similarly recognized in 2008 for her recording of the first concertos of Liszt, Prokofiev and Shostakovich – a remarkable feat for someone only 20 years old. Recent recordings offered works of Schumann and the Complete Works of Rachmaninoff for Piano and Orchestra with Fabio Luisi and the Philharmonia Zurich. 

The 2017-2018 season will see the release of a Bach-focused disc on Naïve including the Italian Concerto, the Liszt Fantasy & Fugue on the Theme B.A.C.H. and the Bach/Busoni Chaconne.

“Bach…where everything begins.”

Since the 18th century, a number of composers have paid hommage to Jean-Sebastian Bach, often considered the musical touch-stone: the perfect balance between science, form, expression and emotion.

Preludes and Fugues; transcriptions; or the musical motif made from the letters of his name: these hommages have come in many forms. In the captivating and fascinating programme by Lise de la Salle, we find works by Bach himself, Poulenc, Busoni, Roussel and Liszt. And then, like a fresh breath of air from the heart of our current century, interspersed between the works of the masters we find four new pieces commissioned from the pianist Thomas Enhco. The result is an essential, modern recording, an unprecedented journey into the essence of music, in which Lise de la Salle exhibits all her pianistic talent, as well as a profound intellectual knowledge.

It’s a long-considered recording, subtle yet powerful, that marks the 15th anniversary of the rich collaboration between Naïve and Lise de la Salle.

András Schiff / Peter Serkin MOZART - REGER - BUSONI Music for Two pianos

In his liner notes, Klaus Schweizer describes a unique meeting of minds when pianists András Schiff and Peter Serkin appeared on stage together for a November 1997 concert held at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rather than join forces, these two “protagonists” rubbed those forces together to see what kind of electricity could be produced, so that “the audience had the pleasure of enjoying a contest of temperaments…and may have come away with the impression that such ‘contrapuntal’ music-making can be more stimulating than the harmony of two kindred souls.” The spontaneity of said performance and all its glorious vices have made their way into this subsequent studio recording, for which we are treated to the same sounds that graced the eyes and ears of all who were there for this rare event. As Schweizer so keenly sees it, this is a program of fugal magnificence, each work drawing from Bach’s highest art its own vivid line of continuity. (ECM Reviews)

Aurelia Shimkus BACH - BUSONI - LISZT B-A-C-H Ich Ruf Zu Dir

Aurelia Shimkus was born on November 2nd, 1997 in Riga (Latvia) and became a Latvian national sensation at age of 11, after her debut performance in the concert of the 90th anniversary of the independence of Latvia, performing a world-premiere of a Latvian traditional folk-song project alongside with some of the greatest Latvian-born musicians such as Gidon Kremer, Elina Garanca and Andris Nelsons. Aurelia Shimkus began to play the piano at age of 4 and gave her first public per- formance at age of 7. She was just 9 years old when she won the 1st prize of the Latvian National Young Pianists Competition and she won the 1st prize at same competition at the age of 15 again as well as at several other national chamber music competitions. She gave her first recital at age of 11 at the Kaunas International Chamber Music Festival (Lithuania) and, since then, has performed as a soloist with Latvian Na- tional Symphony Orchestra, Kaunas Philharmonic Orchestra and State Academic Choir “Latvija“. She has also performed a solo programme of music by Frederic Chopin at the International Festival “Summertime“ in Jurmala (Latvia) in a marathon-concert alongside with such pianists as Dang Thai Shon, Stanislav Igolinsky and David Gazarov. On April 2013, Aurelia had her debut recital in Herdecke, Germany, organized by the agency “Beckerkonzert”. Aurelia Shimkus has participated in masterclasses of the renown French professor Dominique Merlet and, currently, she continues to study at Emils Darzinš Music School in Riga and her teacher is Sergei Osokin, a highly respected teacher of some of the best Latvian pianists.

Anna Gourari CANTO OSCURO

Anna Gourari is a young musician steeped in the venerable Russian piano school, its technical verities and Old World glamour. She has “a very physical, even visceral quality to her music-making that conjures the sound of such golden-age figures as Horowitz and Cortot,” declared Fanfare. With her ECM debut, Gourari offers a set of “Canto Oscuro”: dark songs. The pianist performs two of the most affecting of J.S. Bach’s chorale preludes – “Ich ruf’ zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ” and “Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland” – in arrangements of quiet sublimity by Ferruccio Busoni. Gourari also includes his iconic version of the gripping “Chaconne” from Bach’s Partita No. 2 for solo violin. From her native Russia, she adds Alexander Siloti’s Bach- transcription “Prélude in B minor”, as well as Sofia Gubaidulina’s early “Chaconne”, a vessel for ghosts of the Baroque. The album’s centrepiece is Hindemith’s Suite “1922”, a work influenced by both Baroque models and the Jazz Age; yet its “Shimmy”, “Boston” and “Ragtime” movements are given a dissonant, darkly ironic cast, and the Suite’s “Nachtstück” is night music as haunted and haunting, a very much “dark song”.
About the program, Gourari says: “Bach is a musical god for all of us. I can hardly imagine that someone wouldn’t adore him and his genius. I have been studying and playing a lot of his music: the Partitas, the Suites, ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’. But along with all of his instrumental works, I have always loved his chorales. Busoni’s transcriptions are the ideal way for me not only to love this music but to play it, too. To me, Busoni’s transcriptions are incredibly intelligent and emotionally touching. One can hear Busoni’s devotion to Bach in every bar, and it took someone of Busoni’s historic stature – being a wonderful pianist, experienced composer and singular personality – to make arrangements such as these.”
For Gourari, combining the Bach-Busoni “Chaconne” on a recording with Sofia Gubaidulina’s “Chaconne” of 1962 has been a long-held desire. She says: “There are obvious influences from Bach in Gubaidulina’s work, but also from Busoni. Her piece has been dear to me since I was 16 years old. I have had the honor of meeting her several times, including working with her in Switzerland a few years ago. I think Gubaidulina’s “Chaconne” is one of those timeless works of art that will be played 100 years from now and beyond.”
At first glance, it might appear that Hindemith’s Suite “1922” is an odd man out in this program. Yet the early 20th century was a “dark age,” after all, something that the composer undoubtedly sought to convey with black sarcasm in his treatment of several popular dances from the 1920s, as he twisted them into what Gourari calls a “fantastic” – and perhaps from our vantage, phantasmal – neo-Baroque suite. Gourari adds: “Dark songs are not necessarily quiet. . .”